


What Candles May Be Held To Speed Them All?

by HawthorneWhisperer



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, F/M, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 12:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4100266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawthorneWhisperer/pseuds/HawthorneWhisperer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because Bellamy has a canon weakness for women who could kill him with their bare hands and I wanted some Bellamy/Echo fic.  Warning: not a happy ending, because there’s no way this ends well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Candles May Be Held To Speed Them All?

Bellamy went to her first, because he had a promise to keep.  She may have spat on him but she also saved his life, and he would never forget the fear in her eyes when the Mountain Men first came to her cage.  Someone that fierce should never be so afraid, he thought, and it just made him hate the Mountain Men all the more. **  
**

She was unsteady as he helped her out of the cage, her muscles weak and cramped, but she stood tall anyway.  She translated his orders for those who couldn’t understand him as they worked their way down the line of cages, sorting out those who could fight and those who couldn’t.  Those who were too weak for battle she sent to sabotage the Mountain Men’s equipment the second the main entrance was breached, and those who still had some strength remaining they sent to gather near the nerve center of the mountain, ready to strike when the moment was right.  The more alarms and chaos they could create inside, the better their people’s chance would be outside the mountain.

Bellamy took her with him to hide in a stairwell near the main thrust of the Grounder Army’s assault.  Once their people started trying to breach the door he and Echo would set off an alarm, signaling to the rest of their people–Grounders, Delinquents, and Resistors–that the attack had begun.  He was on edge as they crouched in the near darkness as he tried to forget his the last battle, fought against the people who were now his allies.  He supposed they’d won, but it never really felt like it.  

Next to him, Echo shivered in her bandages.  Bellamy was used to this sort of cold–-a chill that was dark and bleak in a way only a man-made bunker could be–-because it was always cold in Factory Station on the Ark.  But Echo was a woman made for sunshine and heat, not cement and steel and dim, flickering lights.  So before he could stop himself he’d shrugged out of Lovejoy’s vest and unbuttoned the shirt underneath.  She flinched away from him as he threw it over her shoulders and gave him a hard look.  “Kindness is pointless at a time like this,” she hissed, her voice rough around the edges.

“I need you when they come through that door.  You’re no good to me if you’re shivering and distracted,” he countered, avoiding her light brown eyes as they bored into him.

She nodded sharply and buttoned the shirt while he refastened the vest over the thin sleeveless shirt he had taken from Lovejoy.  He fought back a shiver because while he was used to cold, Mount Weather was far more damp than the Ark and Echo glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.  She shifted slightly, bringing her arm and leg into contact with his and there they stayed, sharing body heat and staring up the endless staircase, waiting for their people to arrive.

A distant clang echoed down to them and then another, and then another.  This was it–-the battle had started.  Bellamy cleared his throat.  “Ready?” he asked and turned his head to look at her.

In response she grabbed his face roughly and kissed him, nipping harshly at his lower lip before her tongue sought entrance to his mouth.  His body reacted before his brain did, his hand rising to her neck to hold her in place while his tongue brushed against hers.  Her lips were chapped and her skin was cold to the touch but underneath there was heat– he could feel her heart pumping blood through her veins as her lips moved against his.  He pulled back, dazed.  “What was that for?” he rasped.

“Soon we could both be dead,” she said simply.  “On your signal,” Echo told him, her muscles tense as she prepared to run.

“Go,” he told her and off they ran, Echo towards the surface and Bellamy farther into the bowels of the Mountain, smashing keypads and setting off as many alarms as he could.  Distantly he heard more alarms sound deeper in the mountain and he knew their people had gotten the message.  The battle had begun.

Bellamy searched for her for hours after.  The remaining Mountain Men were corralled into a few decontaminated rooms while Lexa and Kane debated what to do with them and Abby and Clarke circled the woods outside the mountain, counting the dead and sorting the wounded in order of priority.  No one seemed to need him–-Octavia was fretting over a few scratches Lincoln had gotten and the remaining Delinquents were searching for their families–-so he kept looking, hoping he’d simply lost track of her in the heat of battle.

He found Echo some distance from the mountain, stretched out on her stomach underneath a copse of pine trees.  Her face was turned to the east as if she was looking for the sunrise.  He hoped she’d seen it one last time because someone like her should never die in darkness.

It was full morning now and the soft sunshine threw the bullet holes riddling her back into sharp relief and as he crouched down and swept her hair off her face he was struck by how cold she was.  There was no more heat under her skin, no more fire in her veins that spread to his and ignited him.  Just cold.

A twig snapped behind him and Clarke emerged from the underbrush, dark circles under her eyes and shoulders slumped in defeat.  “Did you know her?”

“She saved my life,” Bellamy replied.

Clarke crouched down next to him.  “What was her name?” she asked, and the way her voice wavered told him he wouldn’t be the only one adding Echo’s name to the endless list of people whose blood was on his hands.

“Echo.”

Clarke produced a small knife and handed it to him.  “Her braids.  Cut one and I’ll make sure it gets to her family.”

“How–what were the words?”  He knew Grounders said something to their dead, but he’d only heard it once in the chaos over Lincoln’s body in the dropship.

Clarke told him and he fought against the lump in his throat.  “Yu gonplei ste odon,” he said, the words thick and unfamiliar on his tongue.  He found a small braid in her riotous waves of brown hair and cut it and then closed her eyes with his finger tips.

He handed the knife and braid back to Clarke and she looked at him, concern furrowing her brow.  Clarke turned back to Echo’s body and found another braid, severing it with a flick of her wrist.

She stood and placed the braid in his hand.  “For you,” she said and disappeared the way she came, leaving him alone with his dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously this was written before the season finale, because I was 100% sure Echo was going to die. (I am pleasantly surprised that she's still alive.) Title is from Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth.


End file.
